Aunt Jemima
Aunt Jemima was once considered a mythological figure in American folklore, but recently Anthropologists have discovered evidence that there may actually have been a real Aunt Jemima. Thus, she was America's first black friend. The "Aunt Jemima" uncovered in years of painstaking research by Patrick Henry College lived as a slave of James Madison, the fourth President of the United States (unlike George Washington, who didn't own any slaves). She worked in the kitchen helping Dolley get the Madison's 13 children ready for work in a britches factory in colonial Virginia, circa 1790 B.C.. Aunt Jemima Begins Her Career Jemima was only 12 years old when she first started working for the Madisons as a laundress. Dolley believed Jemima would be able to take care of the 5 rambunctious Madison kids, despite her tender age. But soon, the workload expanded as the Madison family grew; within her first year of employment, Jemima's responsibilities grew beyond the laundry room and into the kitchen, where Dolley began spending more and more of her timeIt was believed that Dolley Madison's reputation as "Baker Extraordinaire" came from Jemima's recipies, not her own.. As was the new American tradition, the Madison family began each morning eating an entire barnyard before setting out for the day's work. This work was too much for one cook and Jemima was introduced to the world of American gastro-intestinal complex by her mentor, Uncle Ben The American Breakfast Table Each day began before sunrise with the slaughter and preperation of an average of 3 full-sized cows and 6 pigs for each and every American FamilyThe Survey of the American Gut, Pre-Independence Colonial Period, Martha Stewart Goodewife, 1760.. From these animals, only the best portions were used to create one sausage patty for each member of the typical American family. From the cows, breakfast steaks were removed for James and Dolley, as well as any visiting dignitaries. The skins were used to make shoes and saddles or other leather items such as strips to whip the children in accordance with The Bible. Any remaining bits of the cow were destroyed.Slaves abhored the waste of food and decided not to throw everything away. This led to the invention of spam. In addition to the sausage, the pigs provided strips and strips of thick, juicy bacon, a staple in the American home. The pigs also provided the delicious fluid for deep-frying all the elements of the American breakfast. Other animals eaten on a daily basis were: * pheasant * quail * goose * duck * turkey * peacock * dodo * chickenhawk Dozens of chickens provided the multitude of eggs to be scrambled, poached and deep-fried. The cows that were not used for their meaty sausage or steak cuts were milked to provide the 15 gallons of unpasteurized milk consumed daily. Other Breakfast-time beverages included: * meade * grog-flavored water * beer * ale * wine * coffee * grog-flavored coffee In addition to the meat, eggs and beverages, the American breakfast included dense bread-like carbohydrate bricks. Whatever bricks survived the breakfast table, were later used to build any needed structures on the farm or sold to the townspeople to enclose their properties. Aunt Jemima Invents Pancakes The passing of the super-carbohydrate food-like bricks was the last job of a full day's work for the masters. For the slaves the last job was to dispose of the remnants. Jemima was disgusted by the entire breakfast system, especially the bricks, which Dolley raved about. Jemima set out to do away with them by secretly replacing them with a fluffier, easier to digest cake-like treat. And the pancake was born. At first the Madisons resisted, but Jemima was able to convince them to switch by allowing them to slather the healthier cakes in a greasy form of sugary syrup. Aunt Jemima Today , Jemima's "friend"]] Aunt Jemima has been immortalized on boxes and boxes of pancake mix. In the middle of the 20th Century, she even appeared as a bottle container for syrup. Only really bad pictures of these today. Footnotes See Also * black friend * Pat Robertson Protein Pancakes™ * Uncle Ben's * Mrs. Butterworth * Roots * Black External Links The History of American Marketing